Who keeps spillover violence from U.S. border? Experts credit immigrants

--Some say immigrants work the "El Paso Miracle." --

One might expect El Paso, a city whose poverty rate doubles the national average, to have a sketchy public safety record. Add to that: the city abuts Ciudad Juaraz, Mexico--the most violent place on earth. But El Paso--like many U.S. towns and cities along the Mexico border--is actually safer than almost all U.S. cities of its size. Because immigrants compose a quarter of the population, some criminologists think that immigrants work the miracle of making U.S. border towns safe.

"If you want to find a safe city, first determine the size of the immigrant population. If the immigrant community represents a large proportion of the population, you're likely in one of the country's safer cities. San Diego, Laredo, El Paso-these cities are teeming with immigrants, and they're some of the safest places in the country."

~ Jack Levin, criminologist, Northeastern University in Massachusetts.

But why would this be true? In a Reason magazine article entitled "The El Paso Miracle" Radley Balko researches some critical factors:

• Immigrants are aware that they have a stake in the country.
• They have sacrificed their personal security and social relationships in order to live here.
• They are success-oriented.
• Some experts theorize that the very process of migration tends to select for people with a low potential for criminality.

The image of spill-over violence in U.S. border communities can't be statistically substantiated, reported the Los Angeles Times last week. After reviewing crime statistics for the largest communities and interviewing law enforcement officials from Texas to California, reporter Nicholas Riccardi concluded that, although there is a widespread perception that violence in Mexico has spread north, "U.S. border communities are fairly secure. Some have even become safer."

Could immigrants along the border be bringing that greater public safety?

Back in 2007, dozens of academic specialists went on record in a letter to President GeorgeGeorge W. BushBush and Congressional leaders saying:

Numerous studies by independent researchers and government commissions over the past 100 years repeatedly and consistently have found that, in fact, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or to be behind bars than are the native-born. This is true for the nation as a whole, as well as for cities with large immigrant populations such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and Miami, and cities along the U.S.-Mexico border such as San Diego and El Paso.

But, continues Levin, the receiving community may play a significant part in the dynamic. An immigrant group that is well-received may show a lower propensity for criminality.

El Paso's stellar crime rate could be a case in point promoting immigrant assimilation and acceptance. In 2007 the Washington Post reported on city leaders' resistance to federal anti-immigration policies. El Paso had resisted border wall construction within its city limits, even undertaking a legal battle it ultimately lost. And the local police to this day refuse to engage in immigration enforcement because, they say, it would damage the cooperation of the city's undocumented population with the police.

At that time El Paso's Mayor John CookJohn Cook described the city attitude thusly: "Most people in Washington really don't understand life on the border. They don't understand our philosophy here that the border joins us together, it doesn't separate us."

And that cooperation remains intact in 2010, evidenced by El Paso's exemplary public safety record. "Life in El Paso is good," stated El Paso's police spokesman Michael Baranyay in the Los Angeles Times just last week.

The reality of safety along the border, belying the myth of border spill-over violence, could add an additional incentive to the nation to welcome the stranger by enacting comprehensive immigration law reform. Adding needed and welcomed immigrants may also promote the common good by improving public safety.